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Jenny Craig fans or those looking to try out the diet plan. You don’t have to pay full price for their favorite dinners, lunches, snacks, and desserts! Try eBay and buy the surplus from other Jenny Craid users! You can get meals and snacks for less than half the price – try it for your first time or enjoy the savings and stay on the plan if you’re already enjoying the food.

Take a moment to look at these prices below and see how much you can save.

Home exercise gyms are handy and the fitness benefits they offer are almost ideal. In addition to having a home gym multi-station, you can also (and should) continue to make ample use of barbell and dumbbells which help teach your body balance and control while giving your muscles the variety they need.

Access to home gym equipment is great for beginners or advanced users. You can choose a squat cage (like a Smith machine) as your sole home gym which will give you the ability to lift barbells safely without a spotter.

Or you can choose a cable-type home gym with multi-stations that has a built-in high and low pulleys for a wide variety of cable exercises, and a plate rack for fast and easy storage of your weights. This kind of home gym equipment even includes the flat / incline / decline bench to use for bench pressing.

Multi-station home exercise gyms

Home Gyms are compact units that can fit into a corner of a room or garage, wherever you chose to set up your home exercises. Costs can range anywhere from $300 to thousands of dollars, so you’ll be sure to find exercise gyms to suite almost any budget. The freedom and access of working out at home is a simple pleasure for anyone who equips a home with a private gym.

What you can get: Exercise stations and a bench press station are standard and make a good starting point for your workout. This will give you a variety of exercises including Bench Press, Incline Press, Shoulder Press and Mid Row. A cable station will allow for a very wide array of exercises including Sports Specific, Core Training, and exercises that mimic Dumbbell Training. You can opt to get a multi-station home exercise gym with an ab Crunch Station for abdominal training.

Next: A Low Pulley Station for Low Rows is ideal for working the abductor and adductors using leg kicks. One the High Pulley Station you’ll be doing Lat pull Downs, and Triceps Push Downs.

Why Get a Home Gym?

Not that public gyms are bad. No doubt they have the social aspect going for them, but if that’s the reason you’re there then don’t expect amazing gains. Social time takes away from your workout and chatting becomes a good excuse not to work out.

If you want to exercise and lift weights like you mean it, you need the advantage of home gym equipment. And without having to wait in line for equipment and machines to free up, you’ll be surprised at how much better a home exercise gym can be for your workouts.

How I lost 35 pounds in 5 months

After years of trying to lose weight, I was encouraged by a friend to try a commercial diet plan. She had success with Weight Watchers and felt that one of these programs that limit calorie intact would work for me. I was intrigued by the Nutrisytem claims on TV and in print ads that the food was delicious and the pounds came off easily. So I decided to give it a try.

My results? I lost 35 pounds in 5 months.

It just melted away while I ate Nutrisystem’s pizza, lasagna, chili, chicken salad, pasta, burgers, pancakes, oatmeal, biscotti cookies, shakes, puddings, granola bars, soups, chocolate and so much more. I’m not a cheerleader for all their food: I loved most of the meals and found their were a few items I didn’t care for, but isn’t that true of any weight loss food program?

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Something like 40% of adults take supplements but liquid vitamins aren’t the leader in the marketplace. They should be. They are much more effective at delivering the nutrients and minerals to your system, and it’s much easier to swallow a few ounces of delicious liquid than try to force a huge pill down your throat.

If you are already sold on the benefits of adding vitamins and minerals to your diet but dislike having to swallow the “horse pill” form they come in, there are alternatives such as powder, soft-gels, drops and liquids.

Don’t Forget to Take Your Vitamins

Like you, I’m in good shape and try to eat right but I can’t always get the fruits and vegetables I like in season – and with the cost of oil, gas, and food going up, even eating well has become expensive. If you find you aren’t eating all the best things as you should, liquid vitamins are all the more important if you want to maintain good health.

As a woman, I have enough to deal with taking calcium and glucosamine daily and don’t want to take yet another large tablet or capsule. I tried different brands of liquid vitamins but was never sold on any – again, because of the price more than anything.

Then a friend of mine suffering from sciatica who was not able to eat due to pain said that her doctor recommended Triple Boost Energy soft-gels as well as liquid green multi-vitamins – both by Irwin Naturals. They were easy for her to take and she made the switch from store brand vitamin pills immediately.

That lead me to get back into liquid vitamins which I had known all along were better for me than pills.

Advantages of Liquid Vitamins

Let’s look at the advantages of liquid vitamins over pill forms:

• Studies show that some vitamin pills not only don’t get absorbed by your system they don’t dissolve at all. In fact, some studies show that most of the vitamins nutrients are not actually being absorbed into your body. Pills only achieve a 10-20% absorption rate; liquid supplements achieve a 98% absorption rate.
• Liquid vitamins are absorbed in your system in as little as three minutes vs pills which can take several hours. Even chewable vitamins do not have the same maximum absorption as the liquid form.
• Tasty! Liquid vitamins are of course easy to swallow and the tastes, such as raspberry, are excellent.

How Much Should You Pay?

There are MLM scams that sell “miracle” liquid vitamin packages such as the Andy Willoughby 3-step-plan Xango Juice (“How in the world are you anyway?) but there’s no reason on earth to pay $35 for a jug of fruit juice. And it won’t cure cancer and other such suchness.

Even if it were actual liquid vitamins, paying a higher price does not mean a better product, it just means more profit for the maker … and the top levels of the pyramid scheme.

(You can, however, pay more for better quality vitamin pills which have enteric coating, the same dissovable system used in pharmaceutical-grade tablets for medicines.)

Don’t think that the liquid form is more expensive; it’s actually less expensive when you realize that it’s effective – you get more bang for your buck. For excellent liquid vitamins at an affordable price, compare prices at Amazon, ebay (if you can trust the seller), or go to online stores such as Bodybuilding.com that sell volumes of such products so they can offer great prices and low cost shipping.

Not being someone of great wealth, it was key for me to find a multi-vitamin in liquid form that averaged out to less than $1 per day. I started taking Nutrition Bounty Liqui Vites (16 oz bottle = $17.89) that has 32 servings, or about 56 cents per day. (It comes in raspberry or strawberry – both delicious and highly recommended.)

Which Brands to Buy?

For performance and price – check out Nutrition Bounty, PureForm, and even Trace Minerals Maxi Multi Drops.

Face it, you’ve avoid taking vitamins because you hate taking pills. Try a liquid vitamin – you’ll love the taste and the convenience. And the price isn’t bad either.

Nutrition Bounty Liqui Vites, 16 Fl. Oz., Raspberry Strawberry A Powerful Colloidal Liquid Multi-Vitamin Formulated For Maximum Absorption!

It goes without saying that the best way to see the world is to do it on foot. Candidates for the World’s Top 10 hiking spots are all are considered to be reasonable treks for fit hikers.

Our picks are:

1. John Muir Trail, California, USA

Not only is the scenery magnificent, but the John Muir Trail can boast of having the sunniest and most mild climate of any mountain trek in the world. The trail starts in the Yosemite Valley and stretches for 211 miles to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the US. Along the way, it takes you past countless lakes and waterfalls, ancient giant sequoias and looming granite towers as it follows the spine of the Sierra Nevada range. The area is so remarkable for its breathtaking vistas that naturalist John Muir once wrote it was “as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.” Despite complaints that it is the crowded Interstate of Sierra trails, the JMT was named as Outside magazine’s 2004 North America Trip of the Year, and places high on Adventure magazine’s list of top 11 classic hikes.

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Both Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig have pros and cons but here are some tips that might help you decide which plan to try in your weight loss program.

Nutrisystem

Nutrisystem is an at-home program – there is no center for you to go into each week to get face to face counseling, or to get your food and weigh in. They have a website, and if you need to speak to a counselor about a question or concern, you log into their website and can be directed to an online counselor who can “chat” with you instead about your issues.

The food from Nutrisystem is “shelf stable” meaning that it can all be stored and shipped at room temperature. It is usually shipped via UPS if it is a large order, or by USPS if it is a small order.

Because the food is shelf stable, it means that a lot of the entrees are either dehydrated (like cup-a-soup), shelf stable canned (like Chef Boyardee, Dinty Moore beef stew, and canned soup are) or full entrees that freeze dried (like gourmet hiking foods). You can either boil or microwave most entrees.

One of the positives about Nutrisystem is that you don’t have to sign any contract to do the plan for a certain amount of time. The food costs about $10 per day (depending on how you set up your orders) and when and if you want to stop doing it, just cancel any future orders and stop. You can set up an auto-ship program or order a la carte after the initial 4 weeks plus one week free. The counseling online, the online forum, etc. are all included in the basic food cost.

Jenny Craig

With Jenny Craig, there is a choice. You can either go to a local center…or you can go to their website and order online. You DO sign up for a certain amount of time on the plan-but they often have shorter “try me” specials so you aren’t automatically signing up for a year…some of the specials are the “20 pounds for $20″ and other promotions, which you can look up on their site. There is the joining fee…and then the cost of food on top of that.

With the actual centers – you go in, weigh in, and can get counseling face to face. If you go to a center, you can get some of their shelf stable entrees and snacks…but you can also get some of their frozen entrees as well… most people like the frozen meals better than the shelf stable ones, but it’s a matter of choice. With the Jenny online program, the choices are more like Nutrisystem, where they are shelf stable and can be shipped to you. Jenny Craig also has an online forum, and other things available as well.

Pros and Cons of Nutrisytem and Jenny Craig

There are pros and cons to each one, but Nutrisystem is a big plus because of the no contract. But if you’re a people person and want to go to a center – Jenny Craig is the better choice. It is really the decision on whether you want to do it on your own, or go to a center and weigh in.

Head to head in costs, Nutrisystem costs less than Jenny Craig – approximately $290 a month for food, versus $450 – $500 a month for Jenny Craid.

The most important point , though, is the taste of the food.

Jenny Craig has a sample pack in their online store that has a couple shelf stable entrees and snacks, and a coupon off your joining fee.

With Nutrisystem, you can go to their site and choose to order an “a la carte” order rather than buying a full week or month of food – and you can choose an entree or two and a few snacks and just try them out if you would like before you spend a lot of money on a full order.

As is the case with either program, there will be entrees you love and other that you won’t like at all. Again, it’s a personal preference but with a bit of research you’ll find that people who have tried both programs give the taste edge to Jenny Craig due to the frozen foods preference over the shelf stable items.

You will lose weight on either plan and you will learn more about nutrition and meal portions than you ever thought possible.

The success stories of both plans are very real. People are losing weight every day by learning to eat sensible, exercising a little more, and paying attention to the good points of a diet (protein and fiber) and how to be aware of pitfalls (sugar and trans fats).